Re-Imagining Work: Shifts in the digital revolution

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, imagines what might be possible if organisations really began to think differently about the power of technological and social change to transform the way we do business.

Despite the fact that most people today have a far richer experience of technology in their personal lives, we still tend to use technology at work in a way that hasn’t greatly changed in over 30 years.

At home, we are surrounded by a multitude of powerful, connected devices, we have adopted an entirely new perspective around openness and sharing and, for the most part, we continue to search out new and different ways of putting technology in a place where it can enable us to become greater than the sum of our parts.

But these behaviours, norms and high expectations have been slower to migrate to the workplace. At work, we have reached a plateau of mediocrity, too often focusing on process rather than outcomes, and failing to look at the bigger picture of what might be possible if organisations really began to think differently about the power of technological and social change to transform the way we do business.

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, visits the RSA to ask: what will it take to change mind-sets, embrace the full, empowering potential of technology and enter a truly open, collaborative and flexible realm of working?